British Court Convicts Four in Botched 2005 Transit Attack

By ALAN COWELL

Published: July 10, 2007

Four men were convicted on Monday in a failed attack on the city's transit system on July 21, 2005, that mirrored lethal suicide bombings two weeks earlier, on July 7.

The convictions came days after yet another attempted terrorist strike. The failed car bombings in London and Glasgow in June illuminated Britain's continuing battle with terrorism with suspected links to Islamic militancy that has consumed the energies of the British police and prosecutors.

More than 100 people are awaiting trial on charges arising from several suspected conspiracies since four suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 other people in the attack on the London transportation system on July 7, 2005.

Two weeks later, a group of men carried explosives in backpacks onto three subway trains and a double-decker bus. But their makeshift bombs failed to detonate.

In a London criminal court on Monday, the four men -- Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29; Hussain Osman, 28; Yassin Omar, 26; and Ramzi Mohamed, 25; all immigrants from the Horn of Africa -- were found guilty of conspiracy to murder. No date has been set for sentencing.

One of them, Mr. Ibrahim, described by prosecutors as the leader of the group, traveled to Sudan in 2003 and Pakistan in 2004 to train in terrorist camps, prosecutors said. He was in Pakistan at the same time as two of the July 7 bombers, but it is not known whether the three men ever met, British security officials said.

A jury of nine women and three men is still considering its verdict on two other men accused of involvement in the conspiracy, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 34, and Adel Yahya, 24.

It is not clear why the explosives failed to detonate, the prosecution said during the six-month trial. The homemade bombs contained a mixture of chapati flour, used to make unleavened bread, and hydrogen peroxide packed into plastic tubs with pieces of metal taped to the outside as a form of shrapnel.

All six men insisted at their trial that they had not planned for the bombs to go off and that they were merely trying to protest the war in Iraq. The failed attacks had a particularly grim corollary. One day later, as the police hunted for suspects, they shot dead a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, whom they said they mistook for a terrorist.

The verdicts on Monday were the latest in a series starting in April, when five British Muslims were found guilty of conspiring to use fertilizer bombs to attack a shopping mall, a nightclub and other targets. Just last week, four more people were convicted in trials related to terrorism. Other trials are scheduled to begin between now and April.

While the July 21 events seemed like an effort at copycat attacks after the July 7 bombings, London's worst peacetime atrocity, the planning had, in fact, apparently begun in April 2005. Members of the group began then to buy readily available products like hydrogen peroxide to make homemade explosives, the prosecution said.

An apartment used by Mr. Omar in north London became a bomb factory, the prosecution said.

One of the convicted men, Mr. Ibrahim, had been photographed by a police surveillance team while on a camping expedition in the English Lake District.

Just after the attempted attacks, the police publicized closed-circuit television images showing the men fleeing. One of them, Mr. Omar, fled to Birmingham disguised as a woman, wearing a burqa. Another, Mr. Osman, fled as far as Italy before he was apprehended.

A third, Mr. Mohamed, the prosecution said, left a suicide note saying he had acted ''for the sake of Allah, for he loves those who fight in his sake.''

Photos: Four African immigrants found guilty of conspiring to murder by trying to bomb a bus and three subway cars in London in 2005, from left: Muktar Said Ibrahim, Hussain Osman, Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohamed. (Photographs by Metropolitan Police, via Associated Press)